tendency to mix drugs, such as taking opiates together with Xanax or alcohol.
Women are especially at risk of becoming addicted to opiates/opioids. As one expert explains, women “accelerate to injecting drugs at a faster rate than men . . . develop[ing] substance disorders in less time than men. . . . Women of all ages suffer greater physical, psychological, and social consequences.”12 In plain language, females get sicker on chemicals faster than males. I hammer away at this point because while the addiction rate is climbing among young women, they continue to be—as they have been historically—under-diagnosed, misdiagnosed, and/or not treated appropriately.
This book focuses on what we need to do to effectively help them, as well as ourselves. You will find the best prevention tools: knowledge about effective means of intervening and finding good treatment, and many new discoveries and techniques that specifically aid female addicts but are still not widely known or properly implemented. I will provide you with practical, time-tested ways of regaining your own well-being while dealing with an addicted daughter. In fact, taking care of ourselves may be the most important thing we parents can do!
There is clearly an urgent need for more effective prevention and treatment for everyone, from primary school on up. This includes taking into account important differences in the way girls and boys mature and handle stress. Young men and women who become addicted share many symptoms and have similar needs to recover, but there are also important differences between the genders that can be critical for proper diagnosis and treatment. For example, groundbreaking research in the study of hormonal fluctuations has opened up promising new therapies to help women avoid relapse as their hormones surge during their menstrual cycle. Other new findings targeting the specific needs of young women in science, psychology, and sociology are brought together for the first time in later chapters.
If you are a parent or caregiver who suspects or knows your daughter or young woman you care about is using addictive substances, I know you just want it to stop. You want it to go away. You want your daughter back. I know because I’ve been there. Faced with feelings of failure, fear, betrayal, anger, and shame, how can we choose or help her to choose the best action to take? We are in a serious, unending crisis, because dealing with addiction is like being on a battlefield. In such a state of mind, how do we evaluate and find effective treatment? Since every rehabilitation center’s website claims to be effective, how do we know what works?
While this book touches on the urgent needs of substance users who are pregnant or mothers, those with varied cultural, racial, or ethnic needs, as well as our young sons, the main focus will be on the legion of single girls and young women at risk. Some are hopeful that we as a country are at a turning point in terms of treating addiction as a medical and often a psychiatric disorder and I share their yearning that the best and latest science-based techniques will become widespread. But those of us who are affected by the disease of addiction now can’t wait.
What you will find in these pages:
• Best evidence-based approaches and new scientific research findings about young women and addiction
• Practical tips on how to assess a potential or actual addiction
• How to take meaningful preventive actions
• What kind of conversation works with your daughter
• The best way to assess her situation
• How to find and finance the most effective treatment
• The ways young women and men manifest signs of addiction differently
• How addiction affects women specifically
• Why underlying or accompanying mental health issues must be identified and treated concurrently in young women
• How differing evidence-based approaches in treatment can be crucial to both genders
• How triggers for relapse can be part of recovery and how they differ for women
• Tools and resources to help you and your family regain vitality and a fuller life
Treatment is increasingly being tailored to be effective for our young women today. Much has been learned in recent years to enhance their treatment, and today as never before parents have a key role to play in our children’s lives when it comes to addiction and recovery.
Brenda’s Story
More than one in four high school girls binge drink (five or more drinks on one occasion), and are five times more likely to have sex—and a third less likely to use protection—than girls who don’t drink. 13
Brenda, a bright, attractive young woman of twenty-two, is the oldest of three children in a stable family with two parents. She was raised in a lovely town in Southern California which, like so many suburban towns today, has a lot of alcohol and other drug problems among its young people. Her mother Abby tells their story.
“Brenda was a bright, beautiful, gifted child who got a lot of attention for her looks from an early age. Brenda seemed to have it all. She excelled in school and took up dance in pre-school. But by the time she was in junior high, in the eighth grade, she was already drinking. I didn’t know, but there were signs. She quit dancing, she took up with different friends, and some of the parents weren’t being responsible—they covered for her. When she got her driver’s license she was driving drunk. She wouldn’t come home. And she had an abusive boyfriend who terrified her—really creepy, horrible. He threatened the family. Her self-esteem tanked, and she started hanging out with the bottom-feeders. She became defiant about anything and would freak out in a second. I became afraid of her anger. I didn’t want to upset her but I became her target. I stopped functioning and worried about her every second. I lost a lot of weight, couldn’t sleep, and I was neglecting the family. Her dad just checked out; he was angry and couldn’t handle it.
“We tried counseling, therapists. They knew she was drinking, involved in risky behavior, but she snowed them. I realized I was in way over my head, and I had to come to terms with the reality. I thought codependency was being a mom, but I had to get real. And Brenda showed some signs that she knew what she was doing. She would leave these little ‘I’m sorry’ notes. She would sleep in Mom’s bed. I’m telling my husband her behavior’s not normal and I start looking for alternatives. The turning point for him was one night when she was drunk and was trying to get in the car and leave. We’re in the garage trying to stop her and her dad, who’s a big guy, had to pin her down. She was wild and she banged her head on the concrete floor. We called the cops and they took her to the hospital, where she was horrible, just violent. When she came home, we said, ‘You have one more chance.’ Brenda walked out. We realized she was going to kill herself.
“Two people had recommended a facility in Utah to us. We pulled her out of high school in March of her junior year. We knew nothing about the school in Utah except that it had been recommended. She flew out and we couldn’t see her for sixty days. It was a thirteen-month program where she would get her high school diploma, counseling, and treatment. And it was not cheap. We used her college fund to pay for it and borrowed on credit cards. It was money well spent. Our youngest daughter was so much younger that she was not involved and was okay. But our son would stay away from us, stay with friends. He started sobbing, saying it was his fault after Brenda went away. He was a straight arrow, never in trouble. He began having problems academically and I was worried about him, but he became a stellar athlete. Still, at the time he was so angry at her.
“It was a tough place in Utah that took in a variety of troubled kids and put them in groups according
